​Before I talk about Nazis today, I wanted to bring up an unrelated issue. Regular readers will remember that last month, a team of scientists concluded that the hypothesis of a comet hitting the Earth during the Ice Age and thus starting and/or ending the Younger Dryas period could not be supported because the evidence put forward for it, the existence of nanodiamonds in a particular layer associated with the comet, could not be confirmed. Graham Hancock ignored these findings, but on Facebook this week he’s praising two new papers that argue in favor of a cosmic impact around 10,800 BCE. The first claims that features known as the Carolina Bays were caused by a cosmic impact, and the second argues that a thin layer of platinum dating to the same period is evidence of a cosmic impact. I don’t know enough about geology to have any opinion on the evidence, but what I do know is that regardless of whether a comet hit, it implies absolutely nothing about the existence of Atlantis. None of the scientists involved in the research has claimed that the comet smashed into Atlantis or destroyed a technologically advanced human civilization.

​Anyway, on to Nazis…

Fringe history has done a lot to normalize Nazism again. We’ve seen evidence of this time and again. Some fringe historians are or were themselves affiliated with Nazism, from Jacques de Mahieu, a Vichy collaborator and head of a Neo-Nazi party, to Frank Joseph, once the head of an American Nazi party. Others have endorsed the work done by Nazi pseudoscientists and pseudo-historians, such as Scott Wolter, who praised de Mahieu’s racial research into the Caucasian conquest of medieval America. Still others have embraced Neo-Nazis, wittingly or not, as when Giorgio Tsoukalos’s H2 program In Search of Aliens praised and endorsed the anti-Semitic work of Jan Van Helsing, an Esoteric Hitlerism conspiracy theorist. The History Channel has happily broadcast several episodes of shows like America Unearthed that followed the same lines of “research” that Joseph undertakes as a hyperdiffusion theorist.

And that doesn’t even begin to explore the explicit fascination fringe history has with esoteric Nazism. Much of this traces back to Jacques Bergier’s and Louis Pauwel’s efforts to tie Hitler to a secret revelation from otherworldly intelligences in The Morning of the Magicians, claims they seem to have meant as a kind of high-end satire, but which later fringe researchers took literally. You can’t sit through a History Channel “aliens” or “lost civilization” program without encountering Nazis, who TV producers darkly hint had some kind of secret knowledge that the rest of us don’t.

I mention this because there were yet more revelations this week that the conspiracy theorists in the Trump White House are more or less cut from the same cloth as the vanguard of kooks who populate the cable TV landscape and served as the advance units for colonizing Washington with conspiracies. According to media reports, Trump’s counterterrorism advisor, Sebastian Gorka, turns out to have been affiliated with a Hungarian Nazi collaboration party and to have pledged fealty to it, writing for the party’s anti-Semitic newspaper and proudly wearing a Hungarian medal associated with Nazi collaboration. Gorka denied the claims and said that the Nazi collaborationist medal was meant to honor his anti-Communist father. Not everyone bought the denial, mostly because at this point, connections to ultra-nationalist, racist, or anti-Semitic groups and causes has become something of a pattern.

But that’s hardly the worst of it. In yet another in a series of depressing revelations about White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, news accounts found him praising a racist French Nazi collaborator. This is not to be confused with his previous praise of a racist French novel, The Camp of the Saints (praise echoed by controversial congressman Steve King), that described non-white immigrants as filthy rapists who will drown the Caucasian race in their “semen.” This time, Bannon praised Charles Maurras, an anti-Semitic convicted Nazi collaborator in Vichy France. Maurras, who was actually a monarchist, tended to play both sides, and he also opposed the Nazis during the Occupation, much to their ire, and he blamed France for not adopting a more anti-Semitic policy to appease Nazis before the invasion. Maurras was a conspiracy theorist who imagined that a cabal of Jews and Freemasons had taken control of the Third Republic and were secretly undermining French society. (Sound familiar?) In his newspaper, he published the names and addresses of Jews, making it easier to engage in anti-Semitic activity.

While news accounts focused on the Nazi connection to Maurras, the more pointed one is the conspiracy theory Maurras developed that the ethno-nation was under fire from four related forces, which he called the “four confederate states of Protestants, Jews, Freemasons and foreigners.” (The last term was literally mixed-blood.) It is the bizarre obsession with Freemasonry that brings Maurras into our orbit here, joining with other extremists in imagining nefarious, powerful secret cabals. He considered the Masons to be Satanic and a force opposed to his beloved Catholic religion, parroting Habsburg propaganda created during the French Revolution, which is rather ironic in a French Catholic nationalist.

According to media accounts, Bannon praised Maurras’s distinction between the “real” nation, meaning those identified as passing some sort of nationalist purity test, and the “legal” state, made up officials, whom Maurras identified with foreigners and Jews. This distinction is a simplified (and racist) version of the tension between the two halves of the word “nation-state.” Modern countries promote the idea that state and nation are identical, but they are not. As the story of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries showed, focusing on the nation over the state leads to ethnocentrism and worse.

It's hard not to think that the people who aid and abet the infiltration of our culture by such ideas are to blame. Fringe history was, as I have said before, the canary in the coal mine, showing us what the elite New York media decided that Middle America wanted to see and would respond to. And more often than not it was white ethno-nationalism and conspiracies about how the Other is secretly in charge of the U.S. government, a claim that it takes no genius to see as related to the fears of white ethno-nationalists that they have lost power. Companies like the History Channel and all the book publishers who have pushed these Nazi, Neo-Nazi, and Nazi-adjacent conspiracy theories in the name of profit clearly don’t blame themselves. I doubt many of them even recognize what they have done. I mean, how many times did the History Channel broadcast a show that implied that white people were the secret font of all civilization, or were responsible for some other culture’s accomplishments? They probably just thought they were flattering their audience. But when the gatekeeper function of the media breaks down so much that it becomes acceptable to market these kinds of ideas for cash without concern for the consequences, something is deeply broken in our culture. Steve Bannon, a former Breitbart executive, is pretty much the fungus sprouting from a media culture rotten with decay.

Andy White has several discussions about the Carolina Bays on his blog. Last post was

http://www.andywhiteanthropology.com/blog/category/carolina-bays

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Bannon

3/17/2017 12:11:41 pm

Steve Bannon has also been known to quote Julius Evola.

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Scott Hamilton

3/17/2017 12:30:22 pm

I don't think that's true. Bannon mentioned Evola during a speech he gave at Vatican conference, as the source of Italian fascism. It certainly indicates Bannon knows who he was and may attribute a bit too much influence to him, but I can find no quotes of his Bannon has ever used. Moreover, Evola, as a uber-traditionalist, had a certain respect for Islam as an authoritarian religion, while Bannon is pretty obviously not a fan.

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Bannon

3/18/2017 10:59:21 am

My mistake. He merely cited him as an ideological influence. Just as bad, in my opinion.

http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.771269

BigNick

3/17/2017 12:37:05 pm

You need to find an archeologist to look into the Carolina Bays. Geologists would just cover up the truth.

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E.P. Grondine

3/17/2017 03:18:59 pm

Hi Jason, Kathleen -

Long ago I pointed out to George Howard that since clovis using people were found using the bays, they could not date from 10,800 BCE.

Furthermore, those geologists looking at the area are working on the date for the reversal of the Teays River, and impact mega-tsunami strata, and are familiar with both.

The Carolina Bays are quite separate from the platinum concentrations, which are indeed solid and firm impact indicators.

Allow me to draw you a picture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbM4vHcRyz0&list=PLQFjoWZeHDMQln37vSd1heFOfte_O_Rhp&index=8&t=72s

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Kathleen

3/17/2017 03:34:40 pm

E. P. Grondine, did you die in 1990?

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E.P. Grondine

3/18/2017 03:18:08 am

No, Kathleen, I died in 2005.

That is why I am wasting my time entertaining idiots in the blogosphere.

Kathleen

3/18/2017 08:08:57 am

My apologies. When I change my train of thought and I am using my phone my editing skills are poor. What I was trying to ask was if you were E.P.Grondine, jr. I watched the video, tried to learn more about you and found an obit. Again, I'm sorry

E.P. Grondine

3/18/2017 03:25:51 pm

HI Kathleen -

I make a whole lot of mistakes myself now a days.
Over the years I've had so much s***t thrown at me by so many chimps that it is difficult to know what all is out there on the net,

A short bio may be found at the beginning of my video on "Impact and Human Evolution".

Kathleen

3/18/2017 03:39:33 pm

Thanks

Kathleen

3/17/2017 03:51:07 pm

Sorry, I meant your father.

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Americanegro

3/17/2017 05:23:26 pm

Sometimes I think "Oh Jason, not another anti-Trump blogpost!" but not this time. This one delivers, so thanks. Gorka's real offense in my view is wearing someone else's medal.

I hope we can look forward to a post on an actual Nazi collaborator, George Soros, and his decades of behind the scenes machinations. That lacuna doesn't diminish the excellence of today's piece. Well done!

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Lurker Un-Cloaking

3/18/2017 09:41:54 pm

Bullshit.

I generally endeavor to be more polite, but this deserves no more than bullshit and a quick kick.

Here is the basis for the slur:

20 December 1998 broadcast of 60 Minutes

"When the Nazis occupied Budapest in 1944, George Soros' father was a successful lawyer. He lived on an island in the Danube and liked to commute to work in a rowboat. But knowing there were problems ahead for the Jews, he decided to split his family up. He bought them forged papers and he bribed a government official to take 14-year-old George Soros in and swear that he was his Christian godson. But survival carried a heavy price tag. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his appointed rounds, confiscating property from the Jews."

Here is a link to full transcript of interview:

http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=43876

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NoTrueWelshman

3/18/2017 10:54:11 pm

I see that truth tends to scare the ill informed away

Americanegro

3/19/2017 12:09:20 am

Was this one of those 60 Minutes episodes where Dan Rather trotted out a memo?

Lurker Un-Cloaking

3/19/2017 11:25:55 am

'Americanegro'

Bullshit piled on bullshit is just more bullshit. It is not a point. Bullshit, in fact, can never come to a point; bullshit is too soft to form a point. When you pile bullshit on top of bullshit, all you get is a bigger pile of bullshit. A bigger pile of bullshit just makes the bullshit more obvious.

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Americanegro

3/19/2017 03:47:18 pm

Just pointing out that 60 Minutes is not a dependably reliable source. There's no need to be a pottymouth.

Lurker Un-Cloaking

3/19/2017 07:17:29 pm

All you are doing is piling more bullshit atop the pile of bullshit you already have piled up. It is clear that on this subject you have nothing but bullshit, as you have done nothing but pile bullshit atop bullshit, and top that with even more bullshit. With bullshit you began, and with bullshit you continue.

Americanegro

3/19/2017 08:33:51 pm

Well, Pottymouth has certainly put me in my place. All hail Pottymouth! Do you kiss Mother Pottymouth with that pottymouth, Pottymouth? Seriously, if that's all you have it's kind of a red flag.

NoTrueWelshman

3/19/2017 09:11:39 pm

He's obviously an anti-Semitic crackpot. AN What would be a reliable source? Infowars?

Lurker Un-Cloaking

3/19/2017 11:20:50 pm

'americanegro'

You start with bullshit.

You come back with bullshit, and again with bullshit, and again with bullshit.

You've got nothing but bullshit on this, from start to finish, however long you want to go on piling bullshit on top of bullshit you already piled on top of bullshit you piled high in the first place.

Nothing but bullshit. Not even drivel....

Americanegro

3/20/2017 12:56:08 am

Again with the pottymouth! It's hard to talk to you when all you have is pottymouth. But as long as you feel good about yourself I'm okay with it.

Oh, wait! Now I get it! Your analysis above, you're talking about yourself! Now it all makes sense.

Lurker Un-Cloaking

3/20/2017 08:19:30 am

'americanegro'

You keep piling bullshit atop bullshit atop bullshit, and do nothing but pile more bullshit onto the bullshit you have already piled up. If you think piling more bullshit atop the bullshit you have already piled up does anything but call more attention to the fact that your comments are nothing but bullshit and have been nothing but bullshit from the original bullshit charge you shat out into a public forum, you are mistaken.

The original source for Bannon's statement about Maurras is Les Echos, and Les Echos does not say where it has got this statement from. This is strange in itself. Can we cite reliably a statement of which we do not know the source?
https://www.lesechos.fr/monde/etats-unis/0211863744143-maurras-raspail-une-inspiration-pour-bannon-2071249.php

What is more, Bannon is only cited with an unspectacular reference to only one of Maurras' ideas. It is the very unspectacular idea that a people can itself unfold in self-determination only within a nation state.

Wherever the population of a country is not defining itself as one people but as separated interest groups with no common intest, there cannot be democracy. This is one of the basic shortcomings of the European Union: There is no such thing as a "European people", and you cannot create it just by creating institutions. And you cannot define a society as a multicultural society if the society then falls apart into separated communities with no common interest any more.

There is a necessity for common ground which defines a nation as a nation. There are limits for diversity, and these limits are narrower than radical liberals think (yet wider than right-wing extremists think).

Modernity and the Enlightenment have to face criticism, too. And not all criticism of modernity is biased. Bannon picked one aspect from a known critizer of modernity. This alone is not a problem.

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Titus pullo

3/18/2017 08:44:57 am

Jason you might be connecting dots on this one. Brannon grew up in a democratic household, served as a naval officer (leaving as a junior officer which is pretty typical for 90 percent of anyone in the service). Did a gig at the pentagon, earned an MA at Georgetown and Mba at Harvard. Goldman Sachs than entertainment business. Just isn't a path for a neonazi. Goldman Sachs isn't known as a right wing isolationist company but if anything the worlds leading crony capitalist firm (see Greece). Sure he might have an old right worldview and quotes Lenin but so what? the republic has survived much worse. I'm more worried about the intolerance on college campuses including IC where my son says anyone who is a libertarian us shouted down in class.

I remember reading a great deal about Maurras when I was doing research on Vichy France in college 20 years ago. That one of the chief advisors of the President of the United States thinks highly of him is disturbing, but not surprising for this administration.

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I'm an author and editor who has published on a range of topics, including archaeology, science, and horror fiction. There's more about me in the About Jason tab.